


making a mess, making amends

by tamilprongspotter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Angst With A "Hopeful" Ending, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Fairytale Themes, Gen, Grief, Heavy Angst, Indian Harry Potter, Indian James Potter, Internalized racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 03:54:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18770659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamilprongspotter/pseuds/tamilprongspotter
Summary: because sometimes death isn't a great adventure. sometimes it is just removal, stuck halfway between fault and absolution





	1. everyone fears death because everyone dies

It’s a constant in the stories Lily Evans grew up reading -- the sweet boy never makes it to the happy ending, always dies in some cruel, violent, unnecessary way to push someone else’s story further along. He always has hope, always fights hard, always gives everything he’s got, and then falls just steps short of the finish line -- a heart attack, a poisoning, a disembowelment by a faceless enemy. Always too close, but no cigar. Always just on the edge of fulfilling his potential. Always an almost.

James Potter is rude and cruel and arrogant, and his friends (save for Remus) are much the same. They roll around on the floor of the Entrance Hall like puppies, run screaming down hallways, push each other down bannisters, and act like Hogwarts is their personal playground instead of a school they could very well be expelled from. They don’t understand what it takes for people with less means (for people like Lily) to come to places like this, to get an opportunity to learn like this -- they live in a world where they can blissfully ignore the storm brewing outside the castle in a way Lily never will be able to.

But then, they do what she thought they never would: they grow up. Sirius Black learns to apologize. Peter Pettigrew learns to use his voice. Remus Lupin fights back against a world that’s had him pinned against a wall with a hand around his neck.

And James Potter loses his razor sharp edges and melts into something truly beautiful. James Potter, somehow, against all odds, becomes kind. He becomes friendly. He replaces the bricks and mortar he’d torn from Lily’s boundary walls and steps back, wiping his hands off on his trousers, and runs in the opposite direction.

So when he smiles at her for the first time (really smiles, not the fake smirk he pastes on while he directs Hogwarts’ student body like a ringmaster at a circus), something within her aches, something dark and melancholy, and she thinks that the war snapping at their heels like an angry beast might take him to teach them all a lesson. They are all taking their roles now, stepping into archetypes crafted long before they were born, and James has unknowingly signed away his own life.

James Potter shines like the sun, too bright to look at straight on, and Lily Evans, like the stories have always foretold, falls in love.

* * *

Boys who look like James never get to be the hero.

He looks at himself in the mirror, skin the color of old pottery, eyes like honey, and thinks: heroism is not for me. 

Heroism is for boys like Sirius, with faces pale as the moon and gray eyes that carry knife strikes of disdain within them like a secret. Heroism is for boys like Peter, who get hailed as unexpected legends, as the hero no one saw coming, as a subversion of everyone’s expectations. Heroism is for boys like Remus, boys who are carrying the weight of infinite sorrows but still redeem themselves, flying up to the sun like an Icarus with wings stuck with something stronger than wax, the glue that only years of suffering can make. 

Heroism is not for James, a boy with a name stolen from a language that doesn’t belong to him, acting like he has a place here, like this could be his home in the same way it is Sirius’, Remus’, and Peter’s. Heroism is not for a boy whose family name sparks hatred in people’s hearts for something so simple as insisting Muggles can be, must be, just as human as wizards. Heroism is not for a boy who has grown up on the edges of a world that embraced Sirius, embraced Peter, but requires him to play like he’s one of them, to spit at and kick Remus like he doesn’t belong.

James would do well to steer far clear of the war. To go abroad with his parents, to go home, and shut his eyes and ears to injustice. To wait out the deaths and the suffering and come back when it was settled (or not come back at all). But because James is James, he signs up for the Order of the Phoenix the morning they all leave school. His parents didn’t raise him to do the easy thing -- they raised him to do the right thing.

But there is still a tiny part of James that wants to be a hero, that wants to steal back the plot from the boys the world calls more suited to it, and say this is mine. This is mine and I will carry it with honor. This belongs to me.

When boys like James play the hero, they nearly always die. He conveniently ignores that.

* * *

Sirius Black has known exactly who he is from the moment he tumbled forth into the world, into the Healer’s hands, into the cage of the Black family’s reputation. Sirius Black has never doubted himself for a moment, has never even entertained the idea that he might like to change, that change might be good for him, that it might be good for those around him. Sirius smiles like a shark, rows of teeth ready to bite, and licks his bloody, cracked lips at the thought of an opportunity to be seen, to be known, to be loved.

Sirius Black knows he will be a martyr -- one side or the other will grow tired of his antics, his recklessness, his unpredictability, and they will kill him. He wonders how it will happen. A knife to the chest? Too mundane. Too boring. A poisoned drink would be interesting, at least, and he inspects every glass he takes at Order meetings with great caution. He thinks of all the great paintings, all the great plays, every book he read, and wonders in what form Death will come for him. Will it be an Avada Kedavra, clean and simple? Or something bloodier, something that will spawn poetry? Will it be someone he knows? Will it be someone he’s hurt? Will it be entirely random, an act of chance, a miscalculation by the universe?

It is all a mystery, but Sirius embraces life as if martyrdom is guaranteed, as if it is an essential law of the universe that he will not live to see the end of the war. Boys from bad homes who grow up snatching pieces of happiness from the world to hoard like dragons are always punished. There are never happy endings for children who didn’t have a happy beginning.

* * *

Peter has never seen himself as a potential hero, has spent too much time playing every single side of a scenario to call any one cause his own. 

He sees James and Sirius, commitment and conviction personified and bound together by brotherhood, and he wishes he were built for that, wishes he too could be a monument to a future that was promised to them but now has to be fought for, tooth and nail. He wishes he had Remus’ fortitude, Sirius’ ability to breeze through anything at all with his heart safely guarded beyond several locked doors, James’ easy confidence and self-worth. He called them friends once. Would they call him a friend now?

He has never felt as comfortable as he does under Voldemort’s wing, and that strikes him as a betrayal, the first in a string of many, as he sits in the front room of the cottage in Godric’s Hollow, sipping on a hot chocolate James had made him. Sirius and Remus newly done wrestling with Harry, lie on the carpet, exhausted but laughing so hard their chests heave like their bodies are playing tug of war with the floor, and Peter wishes he could feel at ease here again. He wishes he could feel like one of them again, like one of four boys rowing in rhythm to bring the boat of their lives to shore.

Peter knows where he stands, in the story of their lives, the betrayer, the one who said goodbye first, the one who shattered their friendship beyond repair. He understands that, someday, people will call him evil in whispered voices. He just hopes it will be behind his back, where he can ignore it. He hopes that he will have the power to silence them with his deeds, his smarts, his actions, when people talk. 

He hopes that his friends will be alive to see it, but he knows better.

Peter may not be a hero, but he sure as hell doesn’t think of himself as a villain. Don’t most people fall somewhere in the middle anyway?

* * *

Remus is the last one left, the last man standing, the last Marauder.

It’s cruel.

He never thought he, of all people, would be the only one left to see Harry pass over that thin, arbitrary line of a seventeenth birthday into manhood. He never thought it would be him, the sickly werewolf, the least favored friend (though he knows that’s not true now, now that Peter sealed his own fate years ago), the one least suited to giving Harry the quiet, calm life he deserves. Instead, he watches happiness dance in Harry’s eyes like it had in Lily’s long ago, watches him smile James’ same boyish, self-conscious smile. He watches Harry struggle to tie his shoes, watches Harry tell the worst jokes he’s ever heard, and lets the river of time run forward toward its inevitable conclusion.

There are no old werewolves.

It is not a matter of werewolves passing into old age unseen, quietly disappearing into the embrace of society. They are all dead, gone somewhere beyond Remus’ vision, and someday, he will join them. Maybe, if he is lucky, he will end up where James, Lily, and Sirius must be, a happy place, a good place, somewhere bright and beautiful. Maybe, if he is lucky, he will be allowed to spend the rest of the universe’s time with them.

But he’s never been lucky.

If he were lucky, would he have been bitten at all? If he were lucky, would he have lived to see his friends die, one by one, like crows leaving their perches on a power line? If he were lucky, if anything in the universe loved him, would he have watched his son ( _his_ son, his _son_ , the words have a certain magic to them no matter where the emphasis falls) be born just weeks before heading off to war?

Remus is not a hero. Remus is a sidekick. But the sidekicks never have good chances, and the charity cases fare even worse.

Too bad Remus is both.


	2. but death is not an ending

James has grown up with the knowledge that the human body is nothing more than a glorified suitcase for an eternal soul. Death is nothing more than forgetting it at the train station and climbing on without your things, realizing only when the train has left the station that your bag is still sitting by the bench you were waiting on, forgotten in your hurry. Even then, he is surprised when he dies, surprised by the instant shock of it. The strange sensation of being without a body, without limits. 

He sees the front room of the cottage, in Godric’s Hollow, and behind him is the foot of the stairs where he’d-- where he’d-- oh well, there was no sense in avoiding the word died now that he was already dead, was there? He’d died there, a hand on the railing, and woken up on the floor like he’d gone on a drunken bender instead of running right at one of the most powerful wizards of the day without a wand. Even now, he didn’t have a wand. 

He laughs, at his empty hands and empty pockets, at the horror of a life he’s consigned his wife and son to, at what a horrible husband and father he’s been, if he’s signed over their lives. He could have fought longer, could have picked a better Secret Keeper, could have been so much more for his wife, for his son. He could have believed it could be about him, when Dumbledore said there was a prophecy, could have believed that Voldemort would choose his son. But no one ever chose boys that looked like James as the hero, no one had ever deemed him important enough to mark as the herald of their death, and James stupidly assumed that his son would be the same. 

Harry is a pretty boy with James’ copper skin and Lily’s green eyes, who sings along to songs of the radio with off tune screeches, and recently learned how to jump, much to everyone’s consternation. Harry is hardly a boy yet, can’t dress himself or get out of his crib alone or sleep through the night, and now he will learn those things without James, without his father, at his side. Harry will learn what the world is like, for boys like them, without a father to guide his path, to hold him when things are unfair and teach him to be proud of his work, of himself, of what he can do, in the few sparkling instances that they are not.

James crumples into a ball at the foot of the stairs and weeps, not for himself but for the son he’s left behind, a son with no history and a deadly inheritance in the color of his skin, a prophecy hanging over his head that will, without a doubt, kill him some day. The hero never survives all the way, even if his body lives on -- something must always be sacrificed. Death’s thirst always get sated, one way or another, and James can see it circling over his son, even if this isn’t the cottage, isn’t the same stairway, isn’t the same world. Even if this is a sick parody of the place he’d lived and loved.

His son will be sacrificed to save other children.

Will he ever be able to repay whatever part of Harry remains? Will he ever be able to apologize for what he’s done? Will Harry ever forgive him?

He should have known better. Nothing ever ends well for boys who look like him, in stories. From the beginning to the end, he should have known better.

* * *

Lily awakens on the nursery floor and hears the soft sound of crying from downstairs and thinks, for a second, that it is Harry. That it is Harry, who has somehow run fast enough past Voldemort to avoid death despite being all too fond of sliding slowly down the stairs on his stomach, one step at a time. She loses herself in that certainty for a second, that her son has survived, before reminding herself who is at the foot of the stairs. Who was at the foot of the stairs. Who has to be, if this is their home.

She feels like she is abandoning her son, with each step she takes toward the doorway of the nursery, her heart thumping painfully in her chest when she slips past it into something new, something unknown. Each step down the hall prompts a stabbing, ripping pain somewhere deep inside her. She can’t turn around. There’s no reason to turn around. 

There’s nothing in this nursery.

She places a foot on the stairs and James looks up instantly, eyes bleary, having sensed her presence finally, and she runs toward him, never doubting him for a second, launching herself into his arms like she often did after a long Order mission, sobbing into his shirt. And James, as he’s always done, comforts her. He wraps himself around her like a blanket, like armor, like a wall against the world, and lets her cry, lets her scream, lets her do anything she needs to fight her way back to whatever will be their new normal. His tears drip into her hair, his nose digging uncomfortably into the top of her head, and they grieve into each other, hands clutching at each other with a desperation they’ve never felt before.

“I love you.” Her voice has been wrung out like a wet dish towel, hoarse and creaky, but he smiles like he has been given a gift, her words lighting him up from the inside. James is a candle, a firework, a lightbulb -- something electric and fiery coursing through him in eternity -- but he’s muted now in death, like there is some deep, dark sadness within him now that cannot ever fully be chased away. 

James has been switched off, forever. 

He doesn’t say anything immediately afterward, brushes her hair out of her face with careful, shaking hands and kisses her like she is something precious, made of glass or porcelain, infinitely breakable.

“I’m so sorry.” He says and she crumbles again, safe within the circle of his arms. She’d often joked, when they were children who didn’t know better, that she could never live without him. And now, she wishes she hadn’t been so certain that a life without him wasn’t worth living, that he hadn’t agreed with her, so one of them could have survived to love their son. She wishes they hadn’t loved each other so much, after saying those three words, and finds it hilarious that James picked three different ones for what was likely the same reason. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for us to be here.”

“I know, baby, I know.” Lily fists her hands in his shirt. “You didn’t know. Neither of us did.” 

She wonders how long it had felt for him, being without her, remembers intimately the seconds between hearing the thudding noise his body had made against the floor and Voldemort appearing in the doorway of the nursery. She remembers each and every one of Voldemort’s footsteps, his taunting words floating up ahead of him, the reminder that her husband had died for them, James’ last heroic blaze of bravery doing nothing to protect him from mortality. 

It had felt like hours, for her. Days and days of torture. And here he was, as always, packing himself away for her, ready to welcome her with open arms whenever she was ready. She remembers that first real smile, the way he’d left space for her in every moment after, and reaches to grab his shirt collar and pull him down into another kiss, a hungry one, in the hopes that it would tell him everything she found herself incapable of saying.

I love you.

I am so happy you are not alone here anymore.

I wish we were both still with him but this is better than nothing.

James seems to understand, when she pulls away, something in his eyes hazy and unfocused, because he smiles, a ghost of the smile Lily remembers, but just enough to convince her. He pulls her close, arms wrapped tight around her, her head resting against his chest, and says sorry again, then a third time, then a fourth, each one blending into the next like scarves pulled out of a magician’s mouth, and she gently punches him in the jaw.

“Ow, fuck.” He says, words slurred and uneven. “I bit my fucking tongue.”

“Stop saying sorry, then.” She challenges, words still heavy with recently shed tears. “Stop saying sorry and help me make this doable, then.”

“Yeah.” James says softly. “Yeah.” And then he smiles, and then it feels real.

* * *

Sirius falls through a curtain and into the kitchen at Godric’s Hollow, where James and Lily are making badly constructed robot horses joust with butterknives. They don’t notice him for a second until Lily’s knife falls off her horse and Sirius dives to catch it, bumping his chin on the tiles. 

“I hate everything.” He complains, and has only a second before James decides Sirius needs to get to know the floor face to face and jumps onto his back, screaming incoherently while nuzzling the back of his head. 

“It’s good to see you again.” Lily says, kicking James off his back. Sirius scrambles to his feet, thankful to be freed, but has only a second before they both tackle him from either side, Lily barely avoiding knocking her head on the countertop as they all go down in a pile again. 

“Can’t we do this somewhere more comfortable?” Sirius whines, but feels at peace for the first time in years, the first time since October 31st, 1981. “Why do you two always have to be so violent?”

“You’re talking about violence? You? Sirius Black?” James says, incredulous. “Don’t corrupt me, my wife has a hard enough time as it is.”

“God, I’ve been here some ten seconds and it’s already ‘my wife’ this, ‘my wife’ that. I’ll go find another place. Somewhere with single men.” Sirius groans, but loops an arm around James’ neck, trapping his throat between elbow and bicep like a vice before rubbing his knuckles into James’ head. That would teach him. “I don’t need losers cramping my style.”

“But we’re winners.” Lily says sweetly. “We won the Board Game Triathlon of July 1980.”

“You were in labor! We let you cheat until you absolutely couldn’t wait anymore!” Sirius exclaims. “I’m still surprised you didn’t have Harry right there on the couch, with how long you were willing to wait just to win Trivial Pursuit.”

Suddenly, he thinks of Harry and Remus, still in the Department of Mysteries, probably at risk of death themselves. Would James and Lily be so happy to see him if they’d known that Sirius had left Harry and Remus to die? If Harry and Remus followed him here, one after another, like little ducks in a line, would James and Lily still be so happy to see him?

“Harry.” James says, hazel eyes searching Sirius’ face. “Have you seen him? They gave him to you, right? He never-- he never showed up here, so…” He looks to Lily, hope clear in his eyes, and she looks to Sirius, putting him on the spot. “You look… older.” He frowns. “How much older? How old is he now?”

“Do you not know?” Sirius asks, a bolt of terror shooting through him. “James, how old are you?”

“Twenty-one. Same as Lily.” James says. “How much… how much time has passed?” He looks to Lily, fear clear in his eyes. “There are no… no clocks, no anything outside the house. It’s like we’re in a little pocket of the universe by ourselves.”

“He’s about to turn sixteen. It’s mid June, now. School’s about to let out.” Sirius says softly, and James and Lily both recoil in horror. “Nearly as old as his parents, now.” He can’t resist making the joke, but they both wince, and it feels awful. “He’s getting his OWLs back this summer. He expects he’ll do well.” 

He doesn’t know what else to say, the secret of Harry’s childhood with Petunia and Vernon feeling like too much for one conversation. Harry’s hard won trust, the way he scouted out rooms on an endless loop of anxiety, the way he held his breath when any adult looked right at him, none of that was what James and Lily needed to hear.

“He looks just like you, James.” Sirius says instead. “Like a fucking giraffe with glasses.”

James bursts into laughter.

“We taught him to shave last summer, Remus and I, and he nearly cut his own face off with a safety razor.” Sirius begins to laugh himself. “He’s got your temper, Lily. The world bites and he bites back. It’s beautiful to watch. He’s found-- he’s found the Map! The Weasley twins, Fred and George, they’ve given it to him and Harry’s used it to find empty classrooms to sit in. God, Evans, he’s so much like you that it hurts sometimes.”

Lily, still shocked, reaches around Sirius to grab James’ arm.

“Nearly sixteen.” James says softly. “It feels like he was a baby just yesterday. For us, he was a baby just yesterday.” He stands up slowly. “It’s a lot to take in at once.” His eyes cut over to Lily, who’s pulled herself up to her feet using the countertop, helping Sirius up after. “Nearly sixteen. I can hardly believe it. We’ve been dead almost…”

“Fifteen years this October.” Sirius says, like an apology. “He asked about you nearly every day. Wanted to know everything we could tell him. Didn’t have much that was kid appropriate, but--”

“Oh, come on, what did we do that wasn’t kid appropriate--” Lily interrupts.

“We made the kid in question, I guess--” James shrugs.

“Oh, shut up, both of you. He’s a great kid and he’d be better with you there, but he’s pretty damn perfect.” Sirius says. “He’s a wonderful kid and it’s all you two. It’s all what the two of you gave him. The rest of us just… helped him along.”

“Fifteen years.” Lily smiles. “You’ve got a lot to tell us.” She reaches out for Sirius’ hand. “No time like the present, right?”

“No clocks either.” Sirius quips. “If James can be believed.”

“Oh, shut it.” James complains, and there it is, the easy rhythm Sirius had missed for half of his life, wrapped up in a bow for him again.

Death isn’t half bad.

* * *

Peter ends up somewhere cold and dark and lonely.

He deserves it.

* * *

Remus stumbles up to the door of a familiar cottage, knocks on the door, afraid of what he’ll find. He knocks again, when there’s no response, then the door swings open to reveal Harry, sleepy eyed and without his glasses and-- no, that’s not Harry. That’s James. It hits him like a punch in the stomach, that this is James, James who he has been hungry for, begging for, praying for for almost seventeen years, and the moment Remus has been given his wishes, he doesn’t see them for what they are.

James catches him without a thought, the two of them forever caught up in a game of cat and mouse fueled by order and chaos and all those eternal things. They were supposed to be eternal. They were supposed to live forever, two dumb teenagers uniquely suited to understand what it meant to not really feel at home anywhere, clawing their way up into security and joy with their last dregs of strength. But James had died and now Remus is dead, both of them leaving young sons behind, and that is the first thing Remus says to his best friend.

“My son’s name is Edward. Teddy. I wanted to call him Teddy.”

“I’m an uncle.” James says, awe and wonder turning his words into fireworks. “You’re a dad. Remus, that’s brilliant.” He looks over his shoulder into the house and yells “Sirius, Lily, it’s Remus!”

“Everyone’s here?” Remus asks softly, not believing his luck. 

“We were all waiting for you.” James ruffles Remus’ hair, then pats his back like they’d just taught the Giant Squid to play fetch again. “We’re not us without you, Remus. Never. That’s true everywhere.”

“You’ve gone soft in your old age.” Remus says, words rocky and uneven because the sunburst of feeling in his chest is forcing its way out of him. “What, you’re a fucking poet now?”

“No, I’m twenty-one.” James says, though he sounds a lot older. “And that means I’m entitled to be ridiculous all the time.”

“I’m thirty-seven.” Remus says. “I’m fucking old as balls.”

“Lovely.” James winks. “We’ll make quite the pair, then.”

He barely jumps out of the way as Lily comes barreling into Remus next, a veritable hurricane of words masquerading as a conversation pouring out of her, and James looks on in mild amusement for a second before disappearing back into the cottage. Remus has hardly gotten Lily to calm down enough to leave actual spaces between her words when Sirius is standing in the doorway, staring at Remus like the universe has spat him up on their doorstep which, if Remus were to think about it in an overly mundane way, it did.

“Sirius.” Remus says, grateful, thinking of the moment Sirius had fallen through the Veil, how Remus would’ve pulled him back if he could. “Sirius, I--”

“You did well with him, Remus.” Sirius comes forward slowly, places a hand on Remus’ shoulder. He pats it twice, thrice, trying to appear as casual as possible, before wrapping his arms around Remus. “You did so well, Remus.”

James joins in, resting his chin on Remus’ shoulder and throwing his arms around them both. “We couldn’t have left him with anyone better, Remus.” His voice breaks slightly as he buries his face in the side of Remus’ neck. “Your Teddy would’ve been incredibly lucky to have you.”

“Teddy?” Sirius asks, confused.

“My son.” Remus says, voice shaking. “Edward Remus Lupin.” 

Lily’s face falls. She’d been the only one to know how dearly Remus had wanted a child even as a child himself, how his first fear, after being turned, was that he could never be a father someday. She’d been the only one to know how jealous he’d felt, watching James with Harry and knowing that could never be his. He is perversely grateful that Teddy will never see the full moon rise with fear in his heart, but all the same, he wishes he could hold his son again, watch Teddy blow spit bubbles with his little rosebud mouth once last time.

“He’s a month old next week.” Remus says hoarsely. “And I’m never going to see him again. I watched-- I saw his mother die. He’s-- He’s going to have none of us.”

“I’m so sorry, Remus.” Lily joins James and Sirius, and they all hold each other like old times, James and Lily gluing Sirius and Remus together effortlessly. “I’m so-- I’m so sorry, Remus.”

“We’re all together.” Remus says, eyes brimming with tears. “It could be so much worse.”


	3. death is just the beginning

One moment, James, Lily and Sirius are playing a rather boring game of Connect Four Times Three, a frankly terrible game they’d devised where three separate games of Connect Four are on at a time and there are all sorts of ridiculous penalties involved for playing games in the wrong order and not knowing exactly when your turn is in each one, while Remus referees. The next, they are standing in a forest, all four of them looking around in confusion. 

And then, at once, they all notice Harry, face streaked with mud and wavy hair matted to his head by sweat and dirt. He looks old, tired, exhausted, far beyond his seventeen years, and James would’ve run to him if he could. From chancing a glance over at Lily, he knows she is seconds from doing the same. Instead, she holds a hand out toward Harry, an invitation left open ended. 

Harry seems amazed, entranced, for a moment, before running to Lily, eyes filled with glee. He tries to take her hand, but his hand passes through hers and he squeezes his eyes shut, like it hurts him to be reminded that she is somewhere beyond him. 

“You’ve been so brave, sweetheart.” She says. 

“Why are you here?” He asks. “All of you.”

“We never left.” Lily says with a smile.

Harry nods slowly, his breathing heavy, and takes a look around the gathering again before making a bee line for James. He is a little more hesitant, this time, not as sure what to do with his father as his mother, but when Harry and James stand together, there is no mistaking them for anything than father and son. Perhaps brothers, James looking young for twenty-one and Harry looking old for seventeen, but their ears, their long fingers, the breadth of their shoulders, are all the same. They’re within an inch of each other in height, the soft slope of their noses matching near perfectly, and when they smile at each other, it is like watching a mirror be invented for the first time.

“I always wondered what you’d think of me.” Harry said.

“Wonder no more.” James intones, sounding far too dramatic, and Harry laughs Lily’s laugh, shrill and screeching. “I think you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. Sorry, Lily.” James holds his hands just millimeters from Harry’s shoulder, giving them both the illusion of contact that they’re craving. “You’re an incredible boy. An incredible man. Any father would be proud to call you his own. And I’m not just any father. I’m yours.”

“You’re proud of me.” Harry sounds almost relieved, and James wants to scream. “You really are?”

“Honest to God.” James’ voice cracks and shatters, a dinner plate thrown against a tile floor. “I’m a lucky man. You and your mother have made sure of that.” 

Harry smiles weakly at him, reaches toward James for a second before remembering his father’s embrace is a tripping hazard, that he is trying to catch smoke in his hands. Watching him pack that simple want away is nothing short of torture, watching Harry realize something so normal, something so regular, cannot and will not be his until he’s dead.

“When you come to us”, James says, “a billion, million years from now, when you’ve got thousands of great-great-great-grandkids or something, you’ll have all you want from us. Anything you want, we’ll give it to you. I promise.”

“Anything I want.” Harry says. “That’s a loaded promise.”

“I don’t mind.” James smiles. “Go, Sirius is waiting.” He points to Sirius, bouncing around antsily like a child being denied attention. “There’ll be time later.”

Harry almost laughs, a choked, wet sound tearing its way out of him, but he walks over to Sirius and Remus on unsteady legs, like a newborn foal.

“I’m sorry.” He says, sounding so like James that Lily looks to James to assure herself he is still by her side. “I’m sorry, to both of you. You should’ve-- you should’ve had years more than you did, Sirius, and I led you to-- to what, your death? Remus, Teddy-- Teddy shouldn’t have to grow up without you, he should have his parents, he should have-- he should have what I didn’t.”

“Teddy has an excellent godfather who will know what he needs.” Remus says. “One who’s lived his circumstances already and knows how to make sure he’ll want for nothing. And you’ll have everyone there with you too. Like your mother’s said -- none of us ever left. We’re just selectively invisible.”

“Very funny.” Harry sniffles, then laughs wetly. “I’m tired of looking at you, so go invisible again.” He swallows hard. “I’ve, uh, I’ve got to die, now. That’s how this ends. I don’t know how much you know. If you know.” He looks around the group slowly, as if drinking the moment in. “I’ll be with you soon, I think. Hopefully he goes down without me.” He manages a wan smile. “I just… when I get there, I’ll be where you are, right?” There is hope in his voice that James cannot bear to crush, so he nods. “I can do this then.” He exhales slowly. “I can-- I can do this.”

“We didn’t want this to happen to you.” James says softly. “None of us ever did. We didn’t-- we didn’t want you to have to--”

“I know, Dad.” Harry says, and James’ heart breaks. “We’d have a problem if you’d wanted me to die.” He tries to laugh and James is reminded of Sirius as a teenager, so unused to the idea of adults that wanted good things for him that he’d laughed in James’ parents’ faces when they’d suggested things so simple as eating more greens at dinner. “Thank you. For loving me all this time. Can’t have been easy.”

“It was.” Lily says. “Every second, it was.”

“I’ll be home soon.” Harry says, and it feels like a parody of a child leaving home, like the universe is jerking James and Lily around, strung up like marionettes. It feels like someone extraordinarily cruel wants them to hurt, wants them to cry, wants them to grieve for their son all over again, like the last sixteen years and nine months and some odd days haven’t been just that in various shades. “I love you. All of you. I have to-- I have to go now.”

“We’ll be with you every step of the way.” James promises.

“You’re never alone, Harry.” Lily adds her voice to the mix.

“And then you’ll have us after.” Sirius says fiercely. “For as long as you want.”

“Forever, if you want.” Remus says. “Let’s go.”

Harry drops the stone, and suddenly they are all back on the cottage floor, grabbing at each other’s clothes and screaming. James is crying and Lily’s eyes are burning with anger and Remus would’ve broken his first pounding it against the wall if they could break anything here. Sirius screams himself hoarse for longer than anyone else, the rebellion of noise all he had left to give, and runs circles around the cottage in the emptiness, searching for someone who isn’t there. Who might never be there.

They _promised_ him they would be there.

They promised him they would be _there_.

Instead, they wait up for that eighteen year old boy to appear, spend enough time lying in wait that they all grow irritable and Sirius has what sounds like an extremely vivid hallucination, and for weeks afterward they sleep in shifts, waiting, waiting, waiting for a teenager that desperately wanted nothing more than to be wanted by them to knock on the front door. 

James cannot look in the mirror and Lily cannot look at him and Sirius and Remus snap at each other like they are kids again, circling each other like vultures, each waiting for a sign of weakness from the other to pounce. It feels like the war again, feels like they are all being played against each other, but they are smarter this time, stronger. They know better. James learns to catch his reflection in windows without wincing and Lily’s smiles come back eventually. Sirius’ words eventually cocoon themselves in bubble wrap and Remus stops trying to destroy the cottage.

They learn to be happy with Harry not showing up, but it takes longer than they thought. They learn to be at peace with themselves, but it takes longer than they thought.

**Author's Note:**

> hope everybody had a good time!!! come find me [over on the tweeter dot com](https://www.twitter.com/tamilprongspttr) if you wanna hang


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